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Wednesday 9 November 2011

BAD DAY


Do you ever have those days where you feel like someone put a voodoo curse on you? It starts from the moment you wake up and suddenly you start to notice that everything around you is apparently aligned to not only go wrong, but drive you utterly bonkers. Yeah, I’m having one of those days (hence the excruciatingly late blog). And don’t get me wrong; on days like these, it’s never important life changing stuff that occurs (although the jury is still out on that as the day is not over). It’s the small inconsequential stuff that when amassed together reminds you that we take the small things way too seriously.

My day began with an hour search for my phone – which by a half an hour in I realized that my phone is far too important to me. In fact, I feel like I am held hostage to this little pesky apparatus and can't believe the power these stupid things hold over people. Anyway, after marching around the flat moaning that a phone can’t just disappear into thin air (with the King marching behind me hollering in kind) I found my phone in the most obvious of places. In short, it was right in front of my freaking face. This obviously did not do wonders for my confidence as I pride myself on being a very meticulous individual with a keen eye. I am a mother damn it (or maybe that's part of the problem). The sobering reality: I’m either coming down with dementia or turning into a man. I’m not sure which is worse.

After this hour long – and utterly futile – search for my phone I ran out the door to meet someone only to realize that I had forgot my travel pass (to speak plainly as the term Oyster card will simply not resonate outside this country) at home and hence could not use any public transport. Meanwhile, it’s important to mention that I was also dressed like a tramp (having ruined two pair of tights by rushing the process of putting them on), was un-showered, and was dawning a hat to hide this fact. Cause this is what happens on one of these days. You throw on just about anything simply to get yourself out the door in one piece.

As I couldn’t really go too far and the King was getting restless, I walked fifteen minutes to a play-group only to discover it was of course closed that day, and was forced to walk back another twenty five minutes to go stuff ourselves in a very small room with a bunch of sick children all playing with play dough the color of meat (apparently they used beet colored food coloring to make the dough this color).

Just to make sure I knew that the universe – and my toddler – were truly in charge, I then spilled my coffee down the front of me, stepped in dog sh*t (yes, cause it’s everywhere don’t you know?!), navigated a tantrum from my son and got home huffing and puffing like an angry out of shape, geriatric dragon. Then to put the cherry oh so gently on top of the sundae that is my day, the King decided that the best place to put my iPhone would be in the bathtub, which was full of water.

Sigh.

No, I’m not dying. I have my health. My son is utterly adorable and my partner rocks (yes you do, C.S). So overall, life is good and I have few complaints – although my heating bill is too high, I would like to complain about that as the gas company are thieves. But today, well, today is one of those days I just wish I had stayed in bed. 

Monday 7 November 2011

YOU ARE DEFRIENDED

Oh you facebook loyalists will love this one. After defriending a ‘friend’ on facebook, a woman from Des Moines, Jennifer Harris, woke up to find her garage in flames. Thankfully her and her husband woke up in time and were able to escape the fire unscathed.

Apparently the arson attack was the result of a fight Jennifer was having with a friend of hers in regards to a party that was being planned and all this was playing out via Facebook – because the real world is far too real apparently. In order to put an end to the fight, Jennifer decided to defriend her friend, Nikki - oh no she didn't! Apparently this didn’t sit too well with Nikki who decided that the best form of retaliation for such an affront was arson. Yeah, that seems perfectly rational.

Lesson number one for all of you out there reading this: pick up the damn phone. Facebook is not the real world, nor should we conduct ourselves solely through these channels. Lesson number two: if you’re defriended on Facebook, put down the matches. It’s not the end of the world; in fact, you probably have a handful of friends of Facebook that you should defriend anyway cause they’re probably not your friends in the first place.

This of course is something I always think about when I scroll through my ‘friends’ on FB. My first thought is, who the hell are these people? I kid…and yet, I don’t. It’s astonishing we are all comfortable with the fact – or pretend to be – that we amass friends like lint on sites like these, when let’s be honest, most of the names in our friends stable are people we haven’t spoken to in twenty years and were never more than acquaintances – if that. In fact, I'm often being asked to be friends with people I've never even met. Hmmm, me thinks it's time we go back to the textbook definition of friendship, just for the fun of it.

For those of you that are mortally offended by my honesty, simmer down, you know I’m right and you are just aching to do a mass culling of your Facebook friend-stable so that you actually recognize some of your so-called friends. But of course you haven’t, and you won’t. Cause in the realm of Facebook, for some reason, no matter how rational the ‘defriend’ option is in some situations, it is one of those cyber taboos that people just can’t seem to handle. In real life – i.e. not in the perverted reality of the cyber world - if Nikki and Jenny were having a squabble over a party, they would give each other the cold shoulder for a few weeks, not return some phone calls and then patch things up over a nice hot latte. 

Then again, from the sounds of it, I’m thinking Nikki may want to stay away from the caffeine right about now. Maybe a nice cup of chamomile tea will do the trick.

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